"Hace muchos muchos años, en un país muy lejano y triste existió una enorme montaña de piedra negra y áspera. Al caer la tarde en la cima de esa montaña, florecía todas las noches una rosa que otorgaba la inmortalidad; sin embargo nadie se atrevía acercarse a ella, pues sus numerosas espinas estaban envenenadas. Entre los hombres solo se hablaba del miedo a la muerte y al dolor, pero nunca de la promesa de la inmortalidad. Todas las tardes la rosa se marchitaba sin poder otorgar sus dones a persona alguna, olvidada y perdida en la cima de la montaña de piedra fría, sola hasta el fin de los tiempos."
- El Laberinto del Fauno
It's still cold. It's windy. The leaves are turning colors. Fall has finally arrived here. And what, it's already almost the middle of November. Well, when it comes to cooler weather and seasons, better late than never really!
Come to think of it, it actually isn't that cold here in Madrid, but the cold, windy breeze of the sea along with fall temperatures hit Barcelona the weekend we decided to go. While it made it slightly colder, it didn't ruin the trip by any means, though. In fact, it was overall a really nice trip!
So, I guess I'll just start from the beginning.
The trip consisted of five of us: Trinity, Robby, Kaitlyn, David (who booked late so ended up not staying in the same hostal as us), and myself. We left last Friday night, taking a bus (it was cheaper than a plane). It was an eight hour ride, which for me isn't terrible since I have to take an eight hour commute to school whenever I go back to Tennessee. The bus was pretty comfy, actually, a nice, fairly big coach bus. My only complaint would that there were a handful of people who didn't entirely respect common courtesy, aka they should have put their phones on vibrate, and should not be blasting music to the point where I can hear their music through my headphones. You'd think someone would go deaf by listening to the music that loud.
We arrived at the hostal around 3:15 in the morning. We stayed in a dorm of eight people, with our own security lockers. Actually, this hostal was really nice. They served a (Spanish) breakfast in the morning, the staff was really helpful, and it was pretty clean. Our roommates were pretty cool, too. The two girls that were there when we arrived were helpful and taught us how to use those really strange lockers (but hey, they worked well). We'd meet our other two roommates later, one who actually joined us for dinner one night. None of them were Spaniards, either, which I guess was and was not surprising.
Our original plan was to get up early and get an early start on exploring the many places of Barcelona. Well...getting in at 3 in the morning and not sleeping too much on the bus makes it hard to get up early. Original plan of awakening time: 8:30. Actual time of awakening: 9:15. That really isn't too bad of a sleep in, but we were all pretty lazy; I think both Robby and I set our alarms to get up, and we both may or may not have ignored them...oops. We eventually rolled out of bed and got downstairs in time for breakfast. Then we headed out to adventure!
We didn't exactly have a prepared itinerary, but we all had an idea of what we wanted to see. We walked by the Columbus Monument (this guy is popular here...yeesh), which was uh, pretty tall. Really neat, though, because the little statue on the top had him pointing to the Mediterranean. After that, the first place we hit up was La Catedral de Barcelona -- we'd wanted to get there pretty early because you could take an elevator up the tower and stand on top of the cathedral. Like the others, the cathedral was gorgeous on the inside and out. Even though the cathedral was undergoing some renovations, it was still amazing to see. I wasn't quite as impressed with it as some of the other ones, but the added bonus was that we got to go up the tower, and it was neat to see the view from the top. It gave us a much closer view of the towers, and what they looked like up close. It's still unbelievable how much detail was put into these structures. And to get that much detail up that high...incredible. At the same time, you can definitely understand how building these were extremely dangerous, having to do all that work from such a height. Crazy.
Saturday's weather (during the day) was actually pretty nice, but still too cold to swim. That didn't stop us from going to the beach, which was our next destination. We walked out towards the harbor, and finally found the beach. We probably spent a small chunk of time just playing around in the sand and walking around the water. Not to mention it was a nice sight -- the fairly clear sky, the blue waters, the pretty land in the background. After a pretty long photo shoot and exploration, we pulled ourselves away from the beach and decided to get some lunch. We went to a reasonably priced place called TapazTapaz. It was pretty much all tapas (obviously), which was good though, because it made it cheaper and you could order a bunch of smaller plates to get just the right amount of food.
After stuffing our face, we had wanted to head back towards the beach to see if we could catch a Gandala (I am almost certain I spelled that wrong) ride over the city. Unfortunately, the winds definitely kicked in then, and so they shut it down for the day. So instead of going above the city, we decided to travel below and try out Barcelona's metro system. We didn't have to use it very much (only a few times) which was nice to save a bit of money, but it was nice to get to places that were a little bit more out of the way, as well as getting back to the bus station the next day. We obviously didn't use it enough to be able to tell how it was compared to the Madrid one, but the cars were a little bit bigger. I don't know. I like Madrid's just because the voices that announce the locations is better (more clear, and much more amusing to hear), and the stations are cleaner.
We took the metro out to the place that I had wanted to see: El Parque Guell. And I'm really glad that we did. It had a very different style to it, kind of like...candyland to be honest. Lots of the buildings looked like they were made of gingerbread, and had little gummy candy attached to them. The stretch of the land was enormous! You would need a couple of days to expore the entire place. We got to stand on the roof of the building you see upon entering, but the best part of it was us finding the path that took us to the top and gave us an overview of the entire city. It was around sunset, time, too, which means the scene was near perfect (oh, if only it had been a tad bit warmer and not so windy...). Seeing the sun fall behind the horizon of the huge city, as well as the lights of the sun hitting the sea...just amazing. We really stumbled upon this by accident, but what a fortunate accident it was! After taking a bunch of pictures, nearly getting blown away by the wind, and starting to freeze, we left the top and just walked around the park for a little bit longer, until we finally decided to leave. This concluded the day's adventure, which involved a whole lot of walking (I will be an expert speed walker when I return to the US). We went back to the hostal and played cards for a while. We also studied. Yes, that's right. We studied on our trip to Barcelona. It couldn't be helped. We had a test coming up on Monday that our professor didn't tell us about until we had already made the plans to go to Barcelona. But give us some credit! We studied even on vacation!
Next morning, we again planned for an early start...and again failed to stay on the wake-up schedule. There's no such thing as a regular sleeping schedule in Spain. Anywhere. Anyway, after we finally got moving (got up, showered, breakfast), we began our last day in Barcelona and really wanted to make it count. We had heard of this Hop-On, Hop-Off bus tour from one of the staff members in the hostal and decided to do that. Basically, it took us to a lot of the cool places in the city, and we were allowed to get on and off whenever we wanted to explore. And we got a discount on it because of the hostal we were staying at. This was most definitely worth it, and was one of the highlights of the trip. It saved us from having to walk everywhere, and took us to a couple of places that we would never have thought of going. On the bus, we saw Olympic Harbor, and drove by some really fancy buildings! It was a bit harder to get pictures on a moving vehicle, but we made it work. Unfortunately, it was a bit colder that day, so sitting on the top of the bus was a bit chilling at times, but we kept each other warm, and we had all dressed ready to face the weather.
We took the first bus line to Plaza Mayor at the center of the city. There were a couple of cool fountains there, but I am pretty sure the highlight of it were the massive amounts of pigeons. There was a stand that gave you bird seeds to feed them, from your hand or just throwing the seeds around. Personally, I didn't want a pigeon landing on me, so I just observed. None of us actually invested in feeding the birds, but Trinity sure had a good time chasing them around! She just ran into the flock of pigeons, roaring and scaring them endlessly. It was amusing, and we got some pretty good pictures of her doing that. Heck, there was one point where it seemed like the pigeons were going to attack us!
After retiring from pigeon chasing, we grabbed the next bus to the highlight of the city: La Sagrada Familia, a church that began its construction in the late 19th century, and is still not complete, and is not expected to be done until sometime between 2026 and 2050. The main planner, constructor of the church, Gaudi (who is a genius with all the different elements he put into the construction and architecture) passed away long before he finished the entire layout, so that didn't help matters, but people have still continued to work on it, and modern day technology will probably help it move along. I think lots of people would assume that it would be just like a Cathedral, and have the same feel to it. Yes, in many ways it was cathedral-esque, but I have to say that this is by far one of the coolest things I've seen since being in Europe. It was incredible. From the outside, it reminded me of a castle that would be at the bottom of Atlantis (looked kind of like coral, really cool coral). So tall, so pointy, and all the different themes it's built on. Gaudi loved la naturaleza, so there are lots of nature and animals in the archtecture (for example, the pillars are on the back of a giant turtle). And of course, there was some amazing religious art, but it was different from what we've seen in other cathedrals -- it was almost like Cubism art (or sculpturing) since a lot of it seemed square, but I know that's not the type of art it was. Really cool to observe, though. On the inside, it was clearly a work-in-progress, lots of construction materials, and it was pretty empty of your typical church items. Some of the stained glass windows were up, though, and those were gorgeous. And the ceilings! The ceilings were great. They kind of looked like a comic book "KABOOM!" kind of thing, only much more realistic and much more religiously significant. They also had an elevator that went up one of the towers, but once again, wind interfered. Still, I wasn't at all disappointed with what I was able to see. Like I said, by far one of the most amazing things I've seen in Europe. And I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's done!
We caught another bus to try and get to El Palacio de Barcelona. It was significantly farther out than we expected, and I can't say that it was entirely worth it (though the good thing was that it was free). Los jardines afuera del palacio son muy preciosos (it had more Gaudi art, including the Hercules fountain, one of his first works), but I'm pretty sure they didn't preserve most the inside. It had a bunch of displays of old clothes and furnishment, but really that's all there was. It didn't have the pretty construction that El Palacio de Aranjuez o El Palacio Real de Madrid had. So overall, I wasn't too impressed, but it was still nice to see for being free.
So at this point, it's about 5:00 PM. We hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning (around 9:30), so needless to say, we were starving. With our Bus Tour stuff, we were given a small packet of coupons, and there were a few restaurants that had sales going on. We wanted something easy and fairly cheap and fast...so logically, we went after fast food. And McDonald's happen to have this magnificent sale of 2 Big Macs for 5 Euro...we were so hungry that even those of us who didn't like McDonald's went running in! We each ordered two Big Macs each, and I have to say, that was the most satisfying meal ever. All of us absolutely devoured those big macs within minutes. We made a nice pyramid of our Big Mac boxes upon finishing, just to show off probably the most unhealthy yet delicious meal we've ever had.
It was getting pretty late at this point, and we decided that we'd catch the last Bus Tour around the city at 7. In the mean time, we did a little bit of souvenir shopping, trying to find little things for our families. After a little shopping, we caught the last bus, took one final look around, then decided it was time to conclude the trip (we were cold and pretty tired). We found a small cafe, sat down, and played cards for a little bit until it was time to catch the bus back to Madrid. On the bus, most of us passed out right away; I studied for a little while, though. We got back pretty early on Monday.
Versus Madrid, Barcelona was extremely different in a few ways. If I had to be perfectly honest, Barcelona's a bit prettier than Madrid; it's got a few highlights that, such as La Sagrada Familia, that Madrid doesn't have, and overall some of the buildings just look a whole lot cooler, much more unique. Still, I am really glad I decided to study in Madrid instead of Barcelona. For one thing, the main language there is Catalan, not Spanish (or in the case of Madrid, Castellano). Catalan is pretty much a mix of French and Spanish, and I had a hard time understanding some words and phrases there. And there was a lot of English there, too, like I felt like I hardly heard Spanish at all. It probably would have been nice to grow up in Barcelona, because they you'd practically be trilingual (learning Catalan, Spanish, and English), but coming in there later makes it a big harder. Also, Barcelona's a pretty big 'going out' city, which we noticed right when we got there. As we were walking to our hostal, we encountered quite a few drunks (more than what you'd see on Madrid's streets) and big crowds. I've enjoyed the nightlife, but I don't think I could do it to the extent that Barcelona does; gotta have some me time, you know?
But Barcelona was a great trip! I had good time with friends and seeing some new and breathtaking things.
The rest of the week's been pretty laid back. We're down to the wire in classes, but I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm even confident about my last exam that made me study in Barcelona! I've started getting ready for finals as well, writing papers and doing a bit of research. This weekend's probably going to consist of me getting my stuff together for all that.
My first tutoring session was last week, too, and it went well! My host's sister is really nice, and I'm sure she understands English better than she thinks she does. I have to say, though, that I never want to teach elementary English. Also, it was kind of tough, because I kind of had to pronounce the English words with a Spanish accent so she'd understand which word I was trying to say. Some of those English words are hard to turn into a Spanish accent! English in general is really hard to learn, especially English from the US, since we have a lot of slang terms and do a lot of play on words. I like English for that reason, but I do think Spanish is a much smoother, and even better sounding language.
I registered for classes at IWU next semester, and while the process was frustrating, it all worked out in the end since I got into everything I wanted to. So next semester, I'll be taking Special Topics in Hispanic Studies (400-level *gulp* Spanish literature course), History of Latin America, Shakespeare's Tragedies and Romances, Marketing: Principles and Management, and finally, my wonderful gym class Personal Fitness (which my brother is also in -- oh it's going to be a fun morning). My Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be tough, since I'll have four classes (including gym) on both of those days, but as of right now, I have no classes on Friday!
Alright, I realize that my blog posts have slipped, but I did warn everyone that that would happen since my schedule would be a little busier. I'll try to update more frequently, but you're just going to have to forgive me when I don't update as frequently as I did in September, especially now that it's finals time.
And now, back to work.
Hasta luego.
~LSquared
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